A 10-pack of Canadian literary trivia
From The Big Book of Canadian Trivia by Mark Kearney and Randy Ray (www.triviaguys.com)
1. The late Milton Acorn, a native of Charlottetown, and one of Canada’s most renowned poets, was also a skilled carpenter.
2. Leslie McFarlane of Haileybury, Ontario, wrote the first 20 books in the famous Hardy Boys series under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon. They were among the best-selling boys’ books of their time, but McFarlane received no royalties.
3. Anne of Green Gables, the story of the little red-haired orphan from Prince Edward Island, written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, was first published in 1908 and is considered the best-selling Canadian book of all time. Though Lucy Maud Montgomery is best known for her Anne of Green Gables books, the prolific author also published some 450 poems and 500 short stories during her illustrious career.
4. The First Ten Winners of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction are:
1. 1936: Think of the Earth by Bertram Brooker.
2. 1937: The Dark Weaver by Laura G. Salverson.
3. 1938: Swiss Sonata by Gwethalyn Graham.
4. 1939: The Champlain Road by Franklin Davey McDowell.
5. 1940: Thirty Acres by Ringuet (Philippe Panneton).
6. 1941: Three Came to Ville Marie by Alan Sullivan.
7. 1942: Little Man by G. Herbert Sallans.
8. 1943: The Pied Piper of Dipper by Thomas Raddall.
9. 1944: Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham.
10. 1945: Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan.
5. The Fall of a Titan, which won a Governor General’s Award in 1954, was written by Igor Gouzenko, once a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa. He defected in 1945 with 109 documents that detailed Soviet espionage activities in the West, including plans by Joseph Stalin to steal nuclear secrets. It is thought that his defection and the subsequent exposure of these facts was one of the significant events that triggered the Cold War. Gouzenko often appeared on television promoting his books with a hood over his head.
6. Canadian poet Robert W. Service once appeared in a film with John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich. The film, dated 1942, was The Spoilers.
7. They Said It: “Men who are attractive to most women are rarities, in this country at any rate. I think that it is because a man, to be attractive, must be free to give his whole time to it, and the Canadian male is so hounded by taxes and the rigours of our climate, that he is lucky to be alive, without being irresistible as well.” Robertson Davies
8. Poet and children’s author Dennis Lee once co-wrote songs for the TV program Fraggle Rock.
9. In the 1950s and 1960s the Coles bookstore chain was the first in Canada to sell the Hula Hoop, the Slinky, and the Mechano set. Why? Because one of the founders, Jack Cole, was more of a retailer than a book lover.
10. Canadian authors Pierre Berton, Hugh Garner, Peter Newman and Mordecai Richler have all written for Maclean’s magazine.